Teen Suicide Rate Epidemic, Teachers Told

Teen-age suicide is a nationwide problem and is spreading at an epidemic pace, members of the faculty at the Lehighton Area School District were told during yesterday's in-service day program.

"It is a definite problem here in Lehighton as well as all other school districts, and as teachers, you should be aware of the symptoms that could lead to suicide," Dr. Artis Palma, a guidance professor at Lehigh University, told the teachers.

Palma and Fred Shipman, an administrator and psychologist in the Quakertown School District, addressed the secondary teachers in the morning and the elementary teachers in the afternoon.

The speakers emphasized that the problem has become so great that the Centers for Disease Control at Atlanta, Ga., has termed teen-age suicide a "disease," and is treating it as such as they attempt to develop a research program that will get to the core of the problem.

Since 1950, the suicide rate in the United States has tripled, the speakers said, and pointed out that there were 30,000 suicides last year, of which 5,500 were children and adolescents.

Palma said suicide is an international problem, with Sweden having the most suicides. Out of every eight attempted suicides, one person succeeds, he added.

The Lehigh University professor pointed out the highest rate of suicide attempts is successful among young females. Females who have attempted or succeeded in commiting suicide were found to be mostly those who were the first-born child in a family, had a noted absence of a father, and the girl had a feeling of being abandoned, Palma continued.

With the boys, those who attempted orsucceeded in commiting suicide were those who were the youngest child in a family, ones who kept their feelings to themselves or tried to solve their problems themselves and had a high drive to achieve.

Palma said guns account for 62 percent of the suicides of persons 16-22 years of age.

He said, "We are a country of restless people. Twenty-five percent of our population is said to be on the move at one time. In the quest for a better life, we buy more things, thereby losing stability and love."

He emphasized that suicide among children comes at a breaking point when they perceive they have a problem they can't solve, such as losing a girl friend or boy fried, not making an athletic team and pregnancy.

With the adolescents, he added, they get to the point where they feel the only way out is death. Of 16 suicides, research discovered that 13 of them had tried to kill themselves more than once.

Shipman spoke at length of the teen-age girl suicide last year in the Quakertown High School. "Looking back", he continued, "we discovered numerous incidents that could have told us that the girl was a prime prospect to commit suicide."

He told the group that there are those who feel that if we avoid the subject - don't talk about it - it will go away and reduce the number of suicides. "This is not true. When you have an epidemic, you don't bury it, but bring it out into the open so the problem can be dealt with. The same thing used to said about sex. We use to think that if we didn't talk about sex, the kids wouldn't know about it or they wouldn't do it. How wrong we were."

He added, "You teachers are the crossroads in a youngster's life, and you must take the leadership in guiding our children. We are not making heroes out of kids by talking about suicide, but just trying to get to their problems," he continued.

He emphasized in most teen-age suicides, the victims perceive there is no future in life for them.

Both speakers stressed to the teachers that it is not expected that they can solve all of the youngster's problems, "but do what you can. Refer a child who is suspected of having suicidal tendencies to the right authority.

"Don't feel guilty if you can't reach all of the students, because not all suicidal children give prior warnings or signs. You are not trained to be aware of all comments or incidents of a student unless you were with them 24 hours a day."

They warned, however, when a school district has a suicide, "you must presume there will be another, because a person with a close friend who commits suicide is a higher suicide risk."

The main reason for most teen-age suicides, the speakers added, is "to much pressure to achieve. Students today carry around more problems that we adults ever had. They have choices to make which we never thought of. Teen-age suicide is not a problem that we are going to solve immediately."

The speakers discussed a recent survey by two members of the editorial staff of The Leni Lenapian, the Lehighton High School newspaper.

The students asked questions of 630 students dealing with suicide.

The survey results, which they called "horrifying," showed that 23 percent of the freshmen male students and 32 percent of the freshman female students had thought about committing suicide.